STAMFORD -- Frank Marcucio could sense the Westhill High School football team he was hired to coach last April was going to be different from its predecessors, the ones he read about and knew only by reputation.

There was the offseason conditioning, the early wakeup calls for summer training. Marcucio didn't have to ask if his players were all in. Their actions indicated that every hand would be pointed skyward.

It soon showed up on the field. A season-opening loss to Trinity Catholic was followed by three successive wins. Purple Pride, a popular term on the Westhill campus, but one from which the football program had seemed exempt, was now applicable.

Vacant stands on Saturday afternoons were now filled by students who felt it was more hip to be seen cheering on their team than roaming the mall.

And Marcucio saw it all come together exactly a month ago, up in Danbury for the Hatters' homecoming celebration. The Vikings were coming off 27-13 loss to Franklin, Mass., when they fell behind and, he thought, for the first time this fall failed to fight back.

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Danbury took a 20-17 lead with just 2:05 remaining.

"At any other point in time, from what I'm told by some alumni and others, the team would have folded their tents and gone home," Marcucio recalled. "These guys though had learned to overcome adversity."

These Vikings instead drove 60 yards for a dramatic 24-20 victory.

As we learned Tuesday morning, that win is now a forfeit. Same with the one two weeks before against Bridgeport Central, and the one the week before that against Norwalk, and the one the week before that against Trumbull, which at the time was the Vikings' first ever against the school.

Tuesday morning, the Westhill players might as well have been sitting in a classroom, seeing "5-4" on the blackboard erased, replaced instead by "1-8."

The Vikings' first four wins this year were vacated because of the participation of an ineligible player, a defensive starter who is a fifth-year senior. Westhill athletic director Mike King learned of the infraction on Monday, informed Marcucio and self-reported it to the CIAC.

The knee-jerk, cathartic reaction, which has already started, is to sling blame. Administrators can go over participatory rules in detail each preseason, but they cannot babysit each athlete. At the same time, with three violations in different sports over the past 14 months, Westhill has to look over ways to redouble its efforts and prevent this from happening again.

Perhaps the one group that has been overlooked in the preliminary discourse is the Westhill players themselves. They are innocent victims. Playing football at the school has come with the price of wearing a scarlet letter. This group was intent on changing that culture.

Marcucio dreaded meeting with his players Monday to tell them the news, though many had already found out.

"I really wasn't sure what to expect," Marcucio said. "I was so upset about it. I didn't know what their reaction would be."

And darn if the same mindset that took place on the field at Danbury didn't take hold in the Westhill locker room.

"It definitely hurt a lot, but I was surprised at how everyone reacted to it," said Chris Soule, who is a starting guard, defensive tackle, co-captain and one of the leaders of this year's revival. "It was a mistake that no one knew about. It's just another bump in the road we have to get over."

Marcucio tried to convince his players to again summon the strength to overcome a considerable obstacle. It didn't take much effort.

"You can look at the glass half-full or half-empty," Marcucio said. "We've been looking at it as half-full."

The Vikings now enter Thanksgiving morning with a record one-game behind a Stamford team that is currently on a seven-game losing streak.

"This game is huge every year," Soule said. "We are taking this just as something else we have to prove."

Hopefully the shuffling of bonus points will not cost a team that would have otherwise earned a state playoff berth from having to watch on the outside. It will get ugly.

While everyone else is pointing fingers, the Westhill players are deserving of a safety net. They are taking a bunker mentality.

The record books may indicate otherwise, but as far as the Vikings are concerned, their first winning record in 25 years will be on the line Thursday at Boyle Stadium.

"I feel like the kids are going to rally around this," Marcucio said. "The kids to a person said they can take away the wins on paper, but they can't take away the wins on the field."